The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed dissatisfaction over the lack of progress in the probe into the larger conspiracy behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi after the Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) filed its status report before it.

A bench of Justices L Nageshwara Rao and Hemant Gupta asked the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) to be present in the court when the case comes up for hearing.

Justice Rao pointed out that there was practically no difference between the present and the previous reports of MDMA, a unit of CBI probing the alleged conspiracy in the ‘belt-bomb’ assassination matter. The bench pointed out that the probe is going on for the last two decades.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991 when a belt-bomb detonated killing him, his assassin Dhanu and 14 others, including the photographer whose camera recorded the killing. The camera and the film were found intact by the investigating authorities.

During a previous hearing, the apex court had said the probe did not appear to have achieved “much headway”.

It had referred to the reports filed before it by the CBI and observed that the investigation by the MDMA could be “endless”.

The MDMA is headed by a CBI official and comprises officers from IB, RAW and Revenue Intelligence and other agencies.

This was perhaps the first case of suicide bombing which had claimed the life of a high-profile global leader.

The apex court had on August 17, 2017 asked the Centre and CBI to apprise it of the probe being carried out on the conspiracy aspect behind the making of the bomb after convict A G Perarivalan had claimed that this aspect was not being probed properly.